He looked at Richie to see if he was buying any of the story.
“I’d never ask you, but I didn’t know where else to turn,” Dan said trying to play on Richie’s sympathies.
“Are you leveling with me?” Richie asked staring Dan in the eyes.
“I swear I am,” Dan lied, trying to put on a face of sincerity.
“Okay, but you just hurt the guy…not seriously, just to teach him a lesson.” Richie replied.
Dan hated to lie to his brother, but he knew that Louis and Slate were bigger problems right now. Harming Slate would at least buy him time to figure out a new strategy.
CHAPTER 21
They drove toward Slate’s house and parked one block away. Putting on their makeshift costumes, they walked the remaining distance to Slate’s house and went to his side door. From observation, Dan knew that Slate hid a key beneath a flower pot on the side of the steps. He and Richie pulled the nylon stockings over their faces obscuring their looks, put on the rubber work gloves, and took out the key. Carefully inserting it into the lock, Dan quietly opened the door and silently entered followed by Richie. They heard noises from the television set in the living room down the hall. Before they left Dan’s car, he had looked on the tablet and had seen Slate sitting in his chair dozing off in front of the TV. Assuming he was still there, Dan led his brother slowly and quietly down the hall until they were just outside the open door. As he rounded the corner expecting to see the sleeping figure of his victim right in front of him, Dan was shocked to see that no one was in the room. Suddenly from the bathroom door in the hall, Slate stepped out putting himself directly behind Richie.
“What the hell?” Slate yelled surprised to find intruders in his hallway.
Richie whirled around at the sound and leaped forward onto Slate, the momentum taking both men to the floor. As Slate struggled to get up, Richie tried to grad the man’s flailing arms, but was only successful in pinning one down. With the other, Slate struck out wildly as he tried to twist his body free from Richie’s weight. Dan ran to the scene and tried to grab Slate’s free hand seeing that it was pounding Richie on the back. Slate tried to free a leg and kick causing Richie to lose his grip on the right arm. With one hand now free, Slate grabbed at Dan’s face getting hold of the stocking and ripping it so that it dangled loosely around Dan’s neck exposing his features. Richie re-entered the fray trying to avoid the kicking legs and to assist his brother in pinning down Slate’s arms.
“Turn him!” Dan screamed figuring if they could get Slate face down, it would lessen his ability to rain blows down on them. Richie pressed his own weight against the wall and used his chest to try to turn the man while Dan pulled on the other arm. With luck, they managed to get Slate face down with Richie lying across his back putting his full weight onto Slate. Dan let go of the arm he was holding seeing that Slate couldn’t lash backward. Instead, Slate tried to do a push up of sorts to straighten himself out, but the weight on his back was too great even with the adrenalin rush he was having. Dan shifted his attention to Slate’s right knee. Putting his heel against Andrew’s upper thigh, Dan grabbed Slate’s ankle and pulled sideways eliciting a loud scream from the victim. Much of the fight went out of the man as Dan yanked again feeling something in the knee give way.
“Enough!” Dan yelled; and Richie slid off Slate’s back and stood up.
Slate was screaming in pain on the floor trying to twist his body the opposite way so he could use his hands and arms to support his knee while Dan stood up. Slate managed to look up at his attackers just before they both fled out the side door. Pulling off what remained of the stocking, Dan raced back to the car and the two brothers sped away.
“I think he saw you,” Richie said as he drove into the night. “Is that big trouble?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dan replied, his heart practically pounding out of his chest. But he was worrying about it. Now Slate knew that he was the same man who had pretended to be a drunk driver the other night when he broke up Slate’s murder plan. There was no doubt in Dan’s mind that Slate knew this was no coincidence. While he had disabled Slate, Dan knew that Andrew would do everything in his power to find him.
Back at the big room monitoring station, Dan saw that Slate had managed to drag himself to a phone and had called an ambulance. Since there were no police cars that showed up at the home, Dan surmised that Slate told the EMTs that he had fallen. Eventually, they carted him out, and Dan assumed he’d be in the hospital for a few days. There was no longer any reason for him to stay monitoring an empty house.
The next morning Louis was already in Dan’s office when he arrived.
“Where the hell is he?” Louis demanded angrily. “He isn’t home and the markers in his clothes say he’s in the hospital. What the hell is going on here?”
“He fell and injured himself,” Dan said trying to reassure the enraged man that the ocean of money was still safe. “In fact, it could be good for us. He’ll have to stay home to recuperate, and that’ll mean more television time. We can slip in more test commercials.”
Although he still couldn’t see why Slate’s injury was the blessing Dan had said it was, Louis calmed down.
“We’re losing money while he’s in the hospital,” Louis barked, more to take the onus off himself for rushing down so quickly without thinking things through. “When’s he going to be released?”
“Should be a day or two,” Dan said. “It doesn’t appear to be more than a sprain.”
“He better be,” Louis said going to the door. ‘Remember, don’t screw this up.”
After he left those very words were going through Dan’s mind. Had he already screwed it up? There were too many people in the city for Slate to ever see Dan’s face again, but what if he had gotten Dan’s license plate the other night when he was staking out the woman. That could be traced. Dan realized that he was going to have to watch Mr. Slate even closer than he had before, if that were even possible.
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